The Dead Mens Song | Page 8

day's fair, gladsome e'e?Sound and safely may he sleep,
Sweetly blithe his waukenin' be.?He will think on her he loves,
Fondly he'll repeat her name,?For, where'er he distant roves,
Jockey's heart is still at hame.'
If you listen right close you'll hear the hiss of the kettle behind it, and you can see the glow of the firelight and smell the sap of green wood in the smoke.
Well, there were continuances; of course. It is never?constitutional to throw a case of politics out of court too soon. We made that four hundred-mile round trip four times and, every time, Burns sat at night where Blackstone ruled by day. Never one word of the case from judge to accused, just continuances. But on the last night--the case was to be pressed next day--the judge said to Allison at the door, as he went off to bed:
"I think you will be before me in a case tomorrow. If the worst comes and you demand your right to address the jury, the court will sustain you. And I advise you give 'em 'Jockey's Ta'en the Parting Kiss'--_and no more_. I know the jury."
But the case was dismissed; we were serenaded at the hotel and held a reception. Driving away in a buggy over the fourteen miles to the railway station, Allison said: "There never was a prettier summer-time jail anywhere in the world than this one. I've been down to see it. It has vines growing over the low, white-washed walls, there's apple trees in the yard and the jailer has a curly headed little girl of six who would bring 'em to you and could slip 'em through the barred window by standing on the split bottom chair where her father sleeps in the shade after dinner. It's a beautiful picture--but it hasn't got a single damned modern convenience for winter and a six months' term would have landed me there till January!"
I shall always believe this to be the most graceful, sympathetic and poetic relation involving a legal case I ever heard and never will cease to give thanks that my always strong and constantly growing admiration for Allison led me to insist upon its transcription.
As soon as the trial fizzled I called on Allison at the _Herald_ office, to extend congratulations and with eager requests for details.
"Well," Allison ruminated, with that ever present twinkle in his eye, "my experience was very interesting. I found I had friends; and discovered traces of a family unknown to history claiming direct kinship with President Thomas Jefferson!"
When the "sports" brought about Allison's discharge from the _Commercial_ to stop his articles on the gambling control of Louisville, unconsciously they added a forceful factor to insurance publishing and I might truthfully say to the insurance business itself. I cannot begin to tell how much has been encompassed in these twenty-six years, but our bound volumes are full of his editorials and articles--the serious, the analytical, the constructive, the caustic, the witty and the amusing. He created _The Piney Woods Clarion_ and in quotations from that mythical publication put a new light on the business. "Insurance Arabian Nights" which he declared were "translated from the Persian," contained more of the odd conceits that fairly flowed from his pen and these two series, with a marine policy-form insuring the "contents" of Noah's Ark, concocted in collaboration with good old Col. "Tige" Nelson (gone long ago, but not forgotten) are the classics of the business.
During his insurance newspaper work Allison was once called upon to give a public endorsement to a friend and very kindly expressed conviction that had his management continued "all the interest of the company would have been secured." When later on he was forced to criticise extraordinary acts of this whilom friend, the endorsement was called up against him in a broadside affidavit, which he promptly reviewed in the most deliciously sarcastic editorial concluding:
And we do not hesitate to declare anew that "we believe if he had been continued as president, all the interests of the company would have been secured." It was certainly not his fault that he did not secure more. Everything cannot be done in eleven months. But in the language of the far-Western tombstone it can be justly said, "He done what he could."
JUST BROWSING AROUND
One who has never read around the clock in a virtual debauch of novel reading cannot appreciate Allison's "Delicious Vice;" no more can he Field's "Dibdin's Ghost" who has not smuggled home under his coat some cherished volume at the expense of his belly--and possibly someone else's too! "The Delicious Vice!" What a tart morsel to roll on one's tongue in anticipation and to speculate over before scanning the pages to discover that the vice is not "hitting the pipe" or "snuffing happy dust" but is as Allison paints it